Scientific summary

Our team has been studying motor control using eye movement model of behavior for more than twenty years. In the last few years, our research has been focused on the role of fronto-medial areas involved in eye movement control in human and non human primate model. Our aim has been divided in two parts. Part 1. What is controlling the variability (response time and metrics) of saccade target selection? Part 2. What is the nature of variability in motor response that contains information used to monitor and modified future action? Part 3. Finally, with colleagues and collaborators we recently started a novel methodological investigation regarding local field potential (LFPs) interpretation. One issue that often comes up among those who interpret LFPs data is the uncertainty about how electrode impedance and other electrode parameters affect LFP recordings, presenting a potential problem in their interpretation. Indeed this is a complex question, given that current flow in the brain depends on a multitude of factors and extracellular recordings cannot uncover the precise neural events giving rise to a specific LFP voltage (Nelson and Pouget, 2010). We intend to strongly develop and extend our studies to better understand the way current flow in the brain varies and to uncover the precise neural events giving rise to a specific LFPs voltages.